Now, in coming weeks as the unknowns get ironed out and Megabus figures out the nuts and bolts of rolling out a new Michigan route, there is but one certainty: Grand Rapids’ transit landscape just changed. Big time.

The city hit the gas on a new, low-cost way to get to Chicago, East Lansing or Detroit, the three cities that three times daily will be reachable by Megabus.

And it all seemed to happen in the blink of an eye, because all city leaders needed to do was give Megabus a place to stop for passengers.

“That’s what’s amazing,” said Schwieterman, of the seeming speed and ease with which Megabus expands its routes and offerings. “The sector can grow almost on a week’s notice, and there are no burdensome constraints on expansion.”

The same cannot be said, Schwieterman argued, of other transit services provided in Grand Rapids by, say, Greyhound and Amtrak.

The sheer size, infrastructure needs and overhead — a new rail line here, fixes to a bus station there — have left them in the dust in recent years as Megabus springs up, Schwieterman said, as fast as the company can “flip the switch.”

(The exception, one surmises, is Owosso, Mich.-based Indian Trails, whose curbside service largely operates in similar fashion to Megabus, but with small offices along its routes, including Grand Rapids.)

“Megabus is the first major new service linking downtown districts since World War II. There really isn’t anything quite like it,” Schwieterman said, adding the traditional bus industry has been shrinking since the 1950s, with some stagnation and possibly a few signs of recent growth.

“Now that we have a new ... provider who’s coming in with a whole new product. It’s very exciting,” said Schwieterman, whose Chaddick Institute has tracked Megabus' growth for some years now.

“Airlines and Amtrak are pretty much frozen in place," he added. "There’s very few major changes occurring, so the bus industry is by far the most exciting sector to watch right now.”

That excitement, Schwieterman said, is undoubtedly attributable to Megabus helping grow the popularity of express, intercity bus services through amenities like wireless Internet and electrical plug-ins, and cheap fares even if you don’t get the $1 seat deal.

To be sure, Megabus is not the only curbside, express system in the nation. But such a service is rare in the Midwest. Megabus, Greyhound’s Northeastern express service BoltBus and Greyhound Express are the exceptions, and all advertise $1 fares, free wireless Internet and the like.

But, whereas Greyhound or even Amtrak might take many months or years to get a large transportation or infrastructure project off the ground, Schwieterman said, Megabus can just roll into town with relative ease and be off again just as quickly.

“They add a hub and it seems to work, and they add another. They basically expand their computer program, their dispatch and drivers,” Schwieterman said. “I was in Atlanta looking at their hub a few weeks ago, and there was one guy with a clipboard directing people but the rest of it was passengers and bus drivers. The technology has allowed Megabus to keep costs to an absolute minimum.”

That’s not to say Megabus is not without its problems. That aforementioned lack of readily available personnel should problems arise has led to criticism of Megabus by riders and competitors alike.

And because the Megabus routes run round the clock, safety is an issue. Records with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration show the company has compliance problems with federal standards aimed at keeping fatigued drivers off the road.

But right now, those are kinks to be ironed out as Megabus continues dominating the curbside industry.

Megabus largely appeals to a younger crowd, Schwieterman said, whose main interest is getting to urban districts and downtowns without having to make stops in the small towns serviced by Greyhound, Amtrak and other bus services.

“It’s going to raise some eyebrows. Young people think Megabus is almost an extension of the public transit system,” Schwieterman said. “They don’t particularly care that it’s a private company, they just want to get from A to B.”

Above all, in terms of transit options in Grand Rapids, Schwieterman said Grand Rapids has something it can happily anticipate.